


What a Pair

by WasJustAReader



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 03:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12762345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WasJustAReader/pseuds/WasJustAReader
Summary: One imagining of how Luke and Leia reunite post-TFA -- because it hurts too much to think they won't -- and another moment of reconnection.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so one of the things I'm most worried about re: Last Jedi is that Luke and Leia won't actually be reunited in the movie, and that we lost that chance with Carrie's death. So, here's... a version of a reunion + a little extra scene at some undefined point post-reunion. Neither necessarily fits with any particular headcanon of mine, they're both just... bits of potential, that happened to make its way out of my head.

“You’re late.”

Luke halted abruptly halfway through the doorway.

His sister didn’t look up from her datapad as she snapped “Well, are you coming in or not? Close the damn door either way.”

Coming forward to stand in front of the desk where Leia sat, Luke shifted his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot much like a schoolboy called up for a reprimand. His face, however, told another tale. There were too many lines and shadows for his to be a child’s offense.

Leia maintained her focus on the datapad in her hand, occasionally tapping out notes or glancing between the screen and the piles of charts spread across the surface of the desk, but never meeting her brother’s gaze.

“Leia,” he said softly.

She didn’t respond for a while, but then suddenly her head snapped up and she let the datapad fall to the desk with a clatter. “I could just… _slap_ you, you know?!”

Luke’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected to be welcomed back with wide open arms, but he hadn’t expected – well he didn’t really know what he’d expected, actually.

“Lei–”

“No. I’m going to talk now, and you’re going to listen.”

Her eyes were fiery, and suddenly Luke knew what it was to be dressed down by General Organa; not his sister, not the last princess of Alderaan, not the silver tongued senator, but Leia Organa, who had earned her rank under and _through_ fire and fury.

“First of all, You. Will. Teach. Rey.” Leia had moved out from behind the desk and was now standing toe to toe with her brother. She punctuated each word of the command with a sharp jab of her finger to Luke’s chest, a move she would never admit she’d picked up decades ago from Han. “Is that understood?” she demanded. “That girl needs guidance in the Force and you’re best equipped to give it.”

“Leia, I–”

“I _said_   ‘Is that understood?’”

Luke sighed heavily before conceding, “I’ll do what I can.”

Leia narrowed her eyes, and for a moment it looked as though she was going to argue further – inform Luke that “what he can” wasn’t good enough – but she seemed to think better of it. Instead, she sniffed haughtily and returned to her seat. “Good.”

“Leia.”

“Hells, Luke! Don’t you have anything else to say? I know my name!” There was a different edge to her voice now – the tone that had only a moment ago been so full of authority now sounded worn, almost desperate.

Luke decided it was time to change his tack. “May I sit?” he asked mildly.

Leia’s eyebrows shot up as she gestured grandly at the lone chair opposite hers. “Be my guest.”

He took his time getting settled, and Leia couldn’t help but wince as he shook out his robes to reveal his unsheathed prosthetic. She could hear the slight click of the mechanism as he rested it on the arm of the chair.

“Do I want to know what happened with that?” Leia asked archly.

“I don’t really know what you want, Leia,” Luke replied.

The words landed with more bite than he had intended, and he could see Leia’s jaw tighten in response. “I know you weren’t in the landing bay when Rey and I came in, and I know you did that on purpose. It was a calculated move. I know you sent a lieutenant – Connix, I think her name was – to tell me to meet you here once I was ‘settled.’ I know you’re angry.” Luke scrubbed his flesh and blood hand across his face before quietly adding, “And I know you’re hurting.”

A tense silence stretched between the twins as Leia stared her brother down. She seemed to be cataloging every bit of him, storing it away for future analysis, working to fill in gaps of years and parsecs.

Luke took the opportunity to look her over as well. There were new lines around her mouth and eyes. Her hair was greyer than when last he’d seen her, and it may have been longer, though it was hard to know for sure, braided and pinned up as it was. She looked… both the same as she always had and completely different. She was a changed woman – an aged woman – but she was still Leia.

Finally she spoke. “Do you know what I want?” she asked. “I want to know why I can’t seem to be angry at you. And I want to be, Luke! I want it with nearly every fiber of my being. But I can’t.” She shrugged helplessly. “Though I wasn’t joking when I said I could slap you.”

“I didn’t think you were,” Luke murmured.

For a fraction of a second Leia’s eyes flashed with something that might have been amusement before she continued, much quieter this time. “He’s gone, Luke. And we’re here. Both of us.” She took a heavy breath. “What are we going to do with that?”

Whether ‘he’ was Han or the little boy who had been Ben Organa Solo, neither twin could really say, but ultimately it didn’t matter. Here they were. And there they weren’t.

Luke slowly shook his head. “I don’t know.”

At this, Leia actually laughed. “You know, that may be the most sensible thing you’ve said since you got here.”

“I try,” Luke replied, chuckling slightly.

Leia gave a decidedly undignified snort before standing once more and coming around to shove Luke’s shoulder roughly. “Get up, you old farmboy.”

Luke politely ignored the small crack in his sister’s voice as he stood and was drawn in to a rather fierce embrace.

“I still want to be angry at you, you know,” Leia said, voice muffled somewhere in Luke’s chest. “It just hurts too much.”

That last was barely above a whisper, but it cut deeper than any words she’d thrown at him yet. And with it, Leia pulled back. She took a deep breath and was all business again. A quick backhanded swipe at the tear tracks on her cheeks, and nobody but Luke would know what had just passed.

“So, Rey’s a pretty good pilot, huh? Now that you two are back with the Falcon, we should see about getting her some more training in that area, too. And you need to meet Finn. And talk to Poe. There’s something there…” Leia trailed off, searching through the documents on her desk. “We’ll have more to talk about, of course, but things need to be done.”

Luke watched as his sister retreated fully in to commander mode, sizing up her personnel and weighing her every option for the best possible outcome.

“Luke?”

She must have asked him something.

Startled out of his thoughts, Luke’s gaze snapped up to meet his sister’s. “Hm?”

Leia gave him a strange look. “Are you still with me?”

“Yes.” He wanted to say more, to assure her that he knew, that he wasn’t leaving her again. That he would try his best to make what he could right. To spare her any more pain. But who was he to promise that? Who was he to hope? Instead, he just repeated himself. “Yes. I’m here.”

Leia nodded sharply. “Good. You’re needed.”

Luke Skywalker left General Organa’s office with a datapad full of tasks and notes, and a sick, guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach that anger might have been a preferable greeting.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’ve been thinking about my mother lately.”

Luke cast a sidelong glance at his sister before returning his gaze to the viewport in front of him.

“Your mother, or…” he began, slowly.

“Well, ours, I suppose.” Leia, who had her back to the viewport, waved a hand almost dismissively as she leaned against the frame. Voice as neutral as if she was discussing the weather or the latest breakfast offering in the mess, she continued, “I wonder if this is how she felt, back then. Watching everything she’d worked for burn.”

Luke didn’t reply, just turned to watch his sister as she stared straight ahead and toyed idly with a ring on her right hand. A few techs across the command center were clearly growing anxious under the general’s gaze, but Luke knew she didn’t really see them; they were simply in her path.

“I wonder if this is how she felt, knowing none of it was enough.”

The casual manner in which those words fell from Leia’s lips startled Luke. This bordered on maudlin for his sister, yet her delivery was as cool and collected as ever.

“But she kept trying,” Luke offered.

“And it killed her,” Leia replied, finally turning her head to meet his gaze. “Some days it seems all too clear that that… stubbornness is genetic. Because stars, Luke, some days I _know_ that this is going to kill me.”

“Leia!”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me, not really. Not in the usual way, at least. I’m still here. I still believe we can do good in the galaxy, and I’ll keep fighting for that. I’m just not sure that belief is enough anymore.”

Luke rubbed his temple a moment, considering how to reply. “Do you remember way back on Endor, a few days after I first told you about Vader?”

Leia quirked an eyebrow as if to say ‘Go on.’

“You were so angry, but then you were worried about your anger, afraid of it. I’d told you about what Master Yoda had told me – about how anger was supposed to be the path to the dark side. But, here and now, this conversation further proves how false that was, how little you had to fear in that respect.”

Leia barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes so far back in her head that they stuck – caught on the familiar plateaus and valleys of this tired conversation. “I’m not afraid of that anymore, haven’t been for years. You know that. The dark has no pull on me.”

“I do. What I’m _saying_ is you’re a fighter, no matter what. You just stood here and told me that it might all be futile, but that won’t stop you from trying to change the galaxy. And there’s the difference. The thing that perhaps makes you most like our mother. Both of you believe--”

“Believed, in her case.”

Now it was Luke’s turn to fight off an eye roll. So precise, his sister.

"--You _believe_ in democracy. In justice. In the people and causes you love, with little exception. And that’s what makes you exceptional. And it’s why, I think, we’re still here.”

Leia snorted, but something in her eyes softened a bit. “Two middle aged orphans twice over. An old religion hermit reluctantly drawn back in to the fray, and an ostensibly childless war widow? What a pair.”

Luke smiled softly at that. “What a pair, indeed.”


End file.
